Growing up, dessert was not a regular feature in our house. My mother, in charge of the cooking, had little interest in sweets, so the daily question, "What's for dessert?" voiced by at least one of us was almost always met with, "Nothing." We lived with it. And as adults, none of us have much of a sweet tooth.
However, there were those times of the year when old family recipes were dug up and my mother indulged in her own bit of nostalgia. Peach pockets, in August, are one of those times.
August is, of course, peach time in Ontario. The stores are full of freestone peaches, perfectly ripe. They don't last long. In addition to my grandmother making peach jam, and freezing peach pies for the winter, at least one Sunday dinner featured peach pockets. I know, you look at the picture and see what is basically an individual peach pie. And, fundamentally, it is. But somehow it is better in pocket form than pie form. Each pocket is a single whole peach, halved and pitted, with the pit cavity stuffed with a mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar, then wrapped in pie dough and baked until golden. My theory as to why these are better than a full peach pie is that peaches are a wet and juicy fruit. In a pie shell, the liquid released during cooking has nowhere to go, contributing to an overly damp interior. With the pockets, you get a better end result with the crust. And the crust to fruit ratio is pretty much perfect.
This year, my mother an my niece, M, were visiting me for a week in August. I trundled off to work every morning, leaving them with a house full of fruit. Mum took the opportunity to teach M one of the tried and true family treats, and I returned home at the end of the day to the heavenly aroma of sugar, baked peaches, and pie crust.
The basics of pastry are a ratio of 2:1 flour to fat, a healthy pinch of salt, and enough liquid to make it come together in a ball. Within those basic parameters, there is a lot of room to play - type of fat, type of liquid. Some people sweeten the crust if it is a sweet pie that is being baked (I don't). Every baking family (and prior to my mother's generation, my family is certainly a baking family) has a pie crust recipe that they swear is better than all others, but they all basically adhere to those ratios.
The first step is to mix the flour and salt, and cut in the fat. A pastry cutter is not necessary. A pastry cutter may, slightly, speed the job, but it is a unitasker that takes up space in the drawer. Two knives works well to get it started, and you can switch to a fork once the pieces of fat are smaller. Work the fat into the flour until it looks crumbly. The picture below is early in the process; the fats need to be cut up much smaller.
On this particular day, the fat was a combination of vegetable shortening and butter. I have only once tried lard, and I didn't like the result much. I either go all shortening or a mix. Butter makes the flavour richer.
For liquid, I beat 1 egg with 1 tbsp of vinegar and add to the mix, stir a couple of times, then add cold water 1 tbsp at a time until the dough comes together as you see here. Very important: KEEP THE MIXING TO A MINIMUM. The more you work the dough, the tougher it will be because the more the gluten in the flour will develop, becoming long and stringy at the microscopic level, weaving together and forming a dense, fibrous structure. This is why we knead bread - to develop the gluten, but what makes a lovely bread makes a lousy pie crust. A note about vinegar - it creates a flakier crust, but it is harder to handle when rolling out. If you're a pastry novice, I suggest just using water to start, and then when you are getting good pastry results, try it with egg and vinegar.
Roll out on a lightly floured surface, with a floured rolling pin, until it is about 3 mm thick. Move the dough around, even turn it, to ensure it doesn't stick. Don't let cracks or tears throw you off (and if you're using egg and vinegar, it is more likely to fall apart at the edges). There is always extra dough to patch up imperfections, but scrunching it up and rolling it out again develops that rascally gluten.
Here we have the dough rolled out and a peach ready to be stuffed with sugar. The dough round here is, perhaps, a little larger than you need, but you can trim if it is too much; it is hard to stretch if it is too little.
Add about a tsp of a the brown sugar/cinnamon mix into the cavity of the peach and then put it back together and wrap and seal in the dough. Don't wrap too tightly, though. Place on a baking sheet and slice a vent in the top. Bake in at 425 for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 350 and bake until golden.
Obviously, this would be good with vanilla ice cream, however, our traditional accompaniment is something we call hard sauce. Sinful, caloric, and of no nutritional value, it is a mix of butter and icing sugar. You take soft butter, and work in icing sugar, adding more and more sugar, until, basically, the butter won't accept any more. What you have is similar to a hard, stiff icing. A little piece of the sauce with each bite of peach pocket works beautifully, because the almost too-sweet sauce brings out the acidity found in any fruit. Each mouthful combines the soft, yielding, sweet peaches with the hint of tartness at the end, with the crisp, flaky pastry that almost melts in your mouth.
Thanks to niece M for her baking, and her photography, and to mum for walking M through the process and extending peach pocket delight to another generation.
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